News from the wild upper-midwest tundra

Wow. Where did the time go? I'll give you the cliff notes version of what's been going on in the Hamlin-Lewellen hemisphere...

1. It's butt-numbingly cold here in Milwaukee. Weather.com just showed us at a whopping 6 degrees with 30mph winds. Which, it computes, means it feels like it's -17 degrees. So we're freezing our gazoingles off. We also got completely bombed with snow. We got a foot of the stuff on Friday, and ever since those dang winds keep blowing it everywhere. The snow drifts are actually quite cool sometimes - you should see the sculptures on our deck through our glass doors. It's like sand dunes only with snow. But on to more pleasant and heartwarming news...(hey, if your ass has to be cold, your heart should at least be warm...)
   
2. Who's a big boy? Who is? Who IS??! Ben is now 1 year old! Where did the time go? I can't remember life without him. He's just such a lovable, happy, well-adjusted little guy. I think what surprises me even more than how fast it's gone is how much I just love his company. His new thing is to crawl very rapidly, slapping his hands and knees down with great enthusiasm, as he chases the cats down the hall with loud sighs/laughs that sound like wheezing. Of course this does not exactly motivate the cats to stay and wait for him to catch them, especially since his primary way of experiencing tactile things is to grab with his fists. He's also switching from formula over to whole milk. This is great for the budget, but not so great for whoever has to clean up a milk barf. Nothing like bilious, sour barf, right? Makes mommy want to join right in.
   
3. My parents gave Ben this great car toy for his birthday that makes all these loud car sounds, honks, makes engine and siren sounds, and vibrates loudly. Ben is scared shitless of it. Poor little guy. David and I were trying our best, quite unsuccessfully, not to laugh as we were comforting him. I bet he'll love it when he's 2 or 3. Ben is the only grandson on both sides and I'm sure my parents were just so glad to be able to buy boy stuff (the princess crap gets old, I'm told).
   
4. We did a whole mess of holiday concerts in the greater Milwaukee area. True, it's mindnumbingly tedious to play a zillion renditions of the Emporer Waltzes, the Robert Russell Bennet "Selections from the Sound of Music", and the Christmas Singalong that feels like it's 20 minutes long with the horns playing nonstop (mouthpiece through the back of the head, anyone?). But these concerts are some of the most important ones we do, because many of the people at the places we go - retirement homes, hospitals, assisted living facilities - would not be able to travel out to see us. To witness the sheer joy and transformation on these people's faces got me so emotional it was difficult to play, especially at the children's hospital where they televised the concert because so many of the children couldn't leave their rooms they were so sick. Just thinking about that makes me tear up like a blubbering idiot. Now that's the true meaning of the holiday season.
   
5. I have become seriously addicted to listening to trance and dance music on my iPod. Is that so wrong? I know the good Zen masters say you should really be fully present for whatever boring or odious chore you have to do (washing the dishes is Thich Nhat Hanh's favorite example), but I find it goes so much faster if I do it with the good ol' little Nano pumpin' through my ear buds. I guess I'm not a very good Zenmaster. I recommend "Rock (Radio Mix)" by M.Y.C, "Sunrise (Radio Edit)" by Angel City, and "Clear Blue Water (Radio Edit)" by OceanLab. All three songs give the best rush! I can be completely exhausted and put this stuff on and get an instant surge of energy. It's total ear caffeine.
   
6. Which is good, because I have gone completely off of actual caffeine except for an occasional mug of green tea, which doesn't even have as much as black tea, which doesn't have as much as coffee. And I've also figured out why so much decaf coffee tastes like complete ass! It's because most of it is chemically processed to remove the caffeine. If you get the water processed stuff, which is so much better for you anyway (who needs a chemical shit storm going on in their body, anyway?!), it actually tastes quite yummy and doesn't give you the jitters (or the shits, which regular coffee often does to me - one of the many reasons I gave it up).
   

So that's it in a nutshell. Alright, so that was a pretty big nutshell. But those of you who know how longwinded I am can appreciate the relative brevity here. Have a great week, and keep any appendages you wish to remain attached to you warm so they don't freeze off and bounce right out onto the frozen pavement!!

Crawling and into EVERYTHING

Whoa! Sorry it's been so long since my last post. I've been busier than Sarah Palin's wardrobe fund manager! Lots to report...where do I start....

Ben started crawling shortly after his 9 month birthday, and he absolutely loves it. At first it started off as this cute little "pull forward/drag knees" sort of motion, and then very quickly it escalated into full-blown maneuvering on all fours. He occasionally does this "bear walk" thing where he drags one leg and uses the other fully extended, little diapered butt stuck proudly in the air. He covers a lot of ground that way.

But wait! There's more! (Geez, I sound like one of those late night infomercials. I gotta write in here more often.)

Standing is also a big hit! He's been pulling himself up more and more, & last week after his afternoon nap I opened the door to find him standing up in his crib, smiling proudly. If we prop him up so he's facing the back of the couch, he'll walk around holding onto the cushions. It's sort of difficult to find things that are safe (i.e., not topple-able) for him to practice standing with, so we might have to buy one of those standing stations or something. Chairs scoot, and plant stands are dangerous. Before long, he'll be running around like a little madman.

Speaking of dangerous, we're working on babyproofing the house. He is getting into absolutely everything. His favorite haunts are, unfortunately for the kitties, the cat food dish and their water fountain in the kitchen. He samples the food pellets eagerly and splashes around in the fountain while shrieking gleefully. We've had to start disciplining. I say, "No touch! No touch! For kitties!" and sometimes he gets it. Sometimes he looks at me like, "What? Me?". A few days ago, for example, he was fixated on the cat food bowl and naughtily kept going back to it no matter how many times I told him no and moved him away. Finally I put him in the playpen, which he hates - it's like Sing Sing to him - and he cried and cried.

Solid food continues to be a big hit, and he's been quite adventurous about sampling (and devouring) more and more adult food. Last week, I fed him pea-sized bites of boneless chicken breast (sauteed in balsamic vinegar) and he snarfed it down eagerly and made loud grunts of approval from his high chair. He also loves David's lentil and bean soups. He enjoys small pieces of clementines, tomatoes, Gerber Finger Food puffs, banana pennies, grape halves, sharp cheddar cheese (he prefers it to provolone), and the timeless classic: Cheerios.

So that's what's been going on in the Beniverse. Tomorrow is Halloween and he's going to be Tigger! :) We're taking him to the nearby mall for several baby-friendly activities, such as free portraits, a hayride, and other fun playing. He'll also get to practice his walking!

Yogaliciousness

I first discovered yoga back in 1996.

Before we talk about yoga, though, I need to give you some background. I had been out of graduate school for 2 years, and frankly, wasn't coping too well. It was the common illusion at CIM that you, of course being the best in your class (ha ha), would win a job right away; but this was not the case for most of us.

In fact, I was only just beginning to break into the freelance scene in Cleveland. I was piecing together a living by juggling several part time jobs, driving ridiculous distances to any orchestras that would have me, and enduring lots of personal stress along with it all.

So of course I fueled my insane lifestyle with chocolate, fast food (hell, who has time to cook with 7 part time jobs?!), diet soda by the bucket, and late-night meals. Often these things were to cure boredom and sleepiness as well as hunger; having something to do on the abysmally dull two-hour drive home from Erie, PA back to Cleveland was preferable to falling asleep at the wheel. And sometimes the wastebasket-sized vat of diet Pepsi was the only thing that kept me awake for a morning kiddie concert when I hadn't gotten home from the previous night's gig until after 1am.

It won't surprise you to learn, then, that after a few years of the space-shuttle mileage drives and ludicrous schedules, I developed a pre-ulceric version of gastritis, or gastric reflux disease (mine was pronounced and quite severe).

I went to my doctor only after I'd eaten enough Tums to turn me into a giant piece of chalk to no avail, and she prescribed a clinical strength Zantac for me. But what was rare in today's medical profession was that she sat down and talked to me for quite a while about other non-medicinal ways I could help heal my condition. (I think I'm only just now beginning to appreciate how lucky I was to be one of the few to get this treatment in today's over-prescribed and under-prevention-educated world of Western medicine.)

She actually recommended yoga and meditation as tools for stress management. For some reason I lit up when she said it, and so I went straight to Borders and bought my first yoga mat, a 3-VHS tape set for beginners, a yoga strap and block (props for modifying the poses for whatever your body needs at that moment). I'll never forget the first time I practiced. As I popped in the tape, I was bracing myself for yet another self-punishing and infinitely annoying exercise routine, with a row of eerily synchronized slap-worthy Barbie clones in their perfect leotards enthusiastically shouting out, "and BREATHE and ONE and TWO and FEEL THE BURN! BLAST that flab!" all with Mickey Mouse plastic lipsticked smiles permanently tattooed on their faces.

Instead the woman (Suzanne Deason, Gaiam's Gentle Yoga for Beginners) was calm and compassionate. I stood in my first Mountain Pose, put my hands together in Namaste, and immediately started crying. It was so kind, so inward and loving - absolutely not what I was used to feeling toward myself, and completely the opposite of what my frenzied life had become. My practice was sporadic but I kept picking it back up. I stopped eating late at night and no longer consumed my usual obscene amounts of chocolate and diet soda. I took about half the bottle of Zantac before I realized that I didn't even need it anymore.

It was then that I really became aware of my own ability to heal myself from the inside out. I read Caroline Myss's _Anatomy of the Spirit_ and for the first time learned about the chakras and their connection to emotion, thought and behavior patterns. I've been a dedicated yoga lover ever since.

So over the past 12 years, I've mostly practiced on my own. I tried several different yoga classes back in NE Ohio, and none of them felt right. There was one studio where the owner had some downright scary and slightly predatory (financially speaking) energy, and that experience alone had me vowing to be a home solitary practitioner for the rest of my life.

I did finally have my first positive experience with a yoga class, given by one of my best friends in Cleveland, Tamara Murphy-Klinder at Mindful Motion in Lakewood. She was so wonderful and the class was such a positive experience that it opened up my mind to looking for a class here in Milwaukee.

The portal for this turned out to be my church. I love the energy there and knew I'd feel comfortable, so when I saw a beginning Hatha Yoga class in the RE class schedule, I signed up. And boy, am I glad I did. I absolutely love it. I surprised myself by being able to do all of the postures and feeling strong and limber during most of them. The teacher, Kris Kramer, is nothing short of amazing. She speaks so informatively and clearly, and is constantly encouraging and knocking down any sorts of mental blocks and insecurities that might prevent you from being fully in your body. I cannot begin to tell you how life altering this is, especially for anyone with body issues.

I just got home from a class with her, and I can still feel my body singing with vibrancy, energy flow, awareness. I feel like my "yoga glow" is radiating out into the next room as I type this! I know I can't cling to it and expect it to last the whole week, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Brilliant article by Steinem on Palin

Wrong Woman, Wrong Message

By Gloria Steinem

Sept. 4th, 2008 LA Times

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need.

Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.

McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

_____

Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.

Ben's first cold :(

This Friday, poor Benjamin had his very first illness in his entire life - a cold.

We felt just as bad as he did, since there really wasn't much we could give him except Baby Tylenol, our congestion removal assistance (with one of those sucker bulb things) and most of all, lots of comforting.

Probably the worst part of it, aside from the general discomfort, was that his favorite self-soothing technique - sucking the ring and middle fingers of his left hand - rendered him unable to breathe due to his nasal congestion. This meant that we had to keep going into his room to unclog, rock, and relax him so he could go back to sleep. He's still too young to use Vicks VapoRub, so I put some Eucalyptus oil drops on a mini-terry cloth clutch blanket for him. He loved it and instinctively cuddled it close to his face as he turned on his side to go to sleep. But aside from those things, there was really nothing else we could do.

Since I became a mother, I've been dreading Ben's first sickness in the back of my mind. It's one of the favorite complaints of the Doom & Gloom anxiety-mongering crowd: "Just you wait until your child is up all night sick!" I suppose since I hadn't yet experienced taking care of a sick child, it was one of those "fear of the unfamiliar" things.

I was pleasantly surprised. I actually loved being there for our little guy. He really needed us, moreso than usual, and it gave me a lot of satisfaction to be able to make it all better for him. Even in the middle of the night, to be able to pick him up and hug him (one of my favorite things in the whole wide world), sing to him, comfort him, and kiss his little tears away - what an incredibly heady feeling. I just adore rocking with him as he falls asleep on my shoulder, a cute little cuddly dead weight, breathing and sighing contentedly. It's weird - I always thought it would be a drag to be so needed, but it really makes me feel incredible.

When I was moving toward feeling ready to try to have children (a very difficult and heartwrenching process that took the better part of 4 years), one of the things I could imagine really enjoying was teaching, playing, and interacting with a child when s/he was older, at least 4 or 5. What surprises me so much about being a mother is just how much I'm enjoying his babyhood, right now, before he's even walking or talking or able to really interact with us.

Amazing. I just love it.

The True Story on Palin

http://my2bucks.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/a-letter-from-someone-who-has-known-sarah-palin-since-1992/

"A woman voting for Sarah Palin would be like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."

:)

There's no place like Sephora...There's no place like Sephora...

Several days ago I went to another big makeup and beauty retail shop that touts itself as a "the store on everyone's lips". I was thinking it would be like another Sephora.

I was sooooo disappointed. Chagrined, really. Crestfallen, if you will.

They had proudly displayed a full array of - are you ready for this? - drugstore makeup!! Now, why would I waste the gas to drive out to this so-called "specialty" beauty store and buy stuff I could buy at Walgreens?! Silly!

Plus none of the workers there seemed even remotely interested in being helpful (it was totally dead in there so they had no excuse) which was highly annoying. They did have a few good non-drugstore brands there, but the mojo there wasn't anything like the energy at Sephora.

But I have to set the emotional and mental stage for you before I tell you about what a relief it was, how absolutely euphoric it felt to set foot today in that mecca, that promised land, that nirvana of nirvanas.

Here's the deal. I've been staying home a lot these days, mostly because:

• work hasn't started up again yet,
• there is a $#!+load of work to be done around here, most of which somehow is stuff only I seem to notice around the house. Curious, that. {*grumble*}
  
• David is working several shifts in a row so I'm on Ben duty (which is sometimes the only fun I'm getting these days), and
• our laundry pile, which I am in charge of, has grown so large I have actually become genuinely afraid of it. I can't put it off any longer. I simply must do it before it gets its own zip code.

Another piece to this puzzle is that I have conscientiously taken off playing the horn since I played my last concert in Breckenridge, and have vowed to myself to wait until Monday to start up again. It was a decision based on the fact that my face had some serious callouses on it by the end of the festival. But the horn is a major expressive outlet for me, and I'm sort of not the same without it. I feel "off" when I've been away from it for too long.

So with all the work that needs to be done around the house swallowing me up and making it very difficult to pry open time for fun, I knew I would explode with household drudgery insanity if I didn't get the hell out for a few hours. I didn't have much time today, because I had to get home for David to be able to bike in to work in the afternoon, but...

I went out to Mayfair, which is hands down the best mall in Milwaukee, and hit my two favorite stores: Sephora, and The Body Shop. I got a shimmery eyeshadow (in Fairy Wings), an eye highlighting pencil, a new lipstick (Beige Star), and some undereye brightener (6am feedings - you do the math) at Sephora, and then got mango and coconut body butters at The Body Shop along with some other skin care products.

I adore retail therapy. After such a disappointing experience with that other beauty store (tsk!), I breathed a contented sigh of relief the moment I walked in. Immediately a Sephora sales associate rushed over to me, headset buzzing (I'm assuming they wear them in case they have...I don't know, a lipstick emergency? A bronzer cleanup on aisle 4?), clad in the uber-chic uniform of a total black outfit and Sephora apron, asking me if I needed any help. I smiled brightly.

"Actually, yes...do you have the Urban Decay line?"

(smiling and rolling her eyes jovially) "Well, of course we do! It's right there (pointing). And our organic skin care regimens are all on the back wall."

I exhaled and felt my entire body relax. Of course they have everything I need! More importantly, they have everything I don't need! I basked in the glow of the bright lights, which somehow, miraculously, don't make you look like the living dead like the ones in so many other stores. (Fluorescent lighting should be outlawed in public places.)

And it was truly an escape into a different world. The lighting, the music, the glamour (yes, that's how they spell it in there - more European or British or something - infinitely more alluring that way, don't you know, dahling). The unspoken but everpresent promise that all of your problems will be solved if you just look gorgeous and smell good...ah yes. I am intimately familiar with such a promise. The efforts of the beauty and fragrance advertising world are not lost on me. Sephora is truly a blissful escape from the sometimes oppressive reality of daily life. Truly, nothing bad can ever happen to you when you're at Sephora.

You go, girl!! To the polls, that is...

Today, August 26th, is the 88th anniversary of women getting the right to vote.

This means that there are women currently on this planet that were alive during a time when it was illegal for them to vote.

This blows my mind.

It boggles me that it hasn't even been 100 years yet that women have had the right to vote.

That's sort of depressing, actually. And inspiring at the same time. I will absolutely be going to the polls this fall! And so should every woman of legal age, no matter who you're voting for.

Put your heart where your brain is

Those of you who've been reading this blog since the Democratic primaries know that I was a huge Hillary supporter from day one. And I still am. I found it near impossible to switch gears to Obama when he won the nomination, and I have been having a devil of a time mustering up enthusiasm for the upcoming fall election because of it.

Which is so odd. I am very much aligned with Obama on pretty much every single issue, and I think he's an amazing man. He is already an incredible role model for the African American population, and that will only be magnified exponentially if he's our next President. I also admire what an airtight campaign he has run and believe that contributed to his huge success. He moved forward with integrity and didn't use the same old "war room" mudslinging tactics that Hillary used, and I think it appealed to the more evolved voter (which is perhaps why he has such a huge young following).

And yet, still, I couldn't get behind him. I think what turned me off, what repelled me so strongly, was all the hype. I have never been one to follow fads or crowds. Call me a "free spirit" if you will, but that's how I've always been. The way he would get crowds all riled up, southern baptist church revival style, without really putting forth any concrete solutions or strategies as to how to fix the issues he got everyone pumped up against/about, really put me off.

Then there's the whole thing about how young he is, and how inexperienced. I have to admit, I was very concerned about that too.

But now that he's announced Biden...I am so relieved. I adore Biden. I have laughed out loud watching him on C-Span, which most of the time is one of the most mindnumbingly boring channels on the planet. When Roberts was getting grilled before his appointment to the Supreme Court, I remember him just getting in the guy's face and telling him off when he was evading questions. I had to admire him. This video personifies what I love about him.

And I think that he complements Obama well. Plus he has loads of foreign policy experience, and he's been around the block. Now that's a team I can get behind. I'm not going to campaign or anything, but now I can go to the polls in November and feel good about who I'm voting for.

For that I am quite relieved.

Sittin' pretty

It's been about a week now that Ben has been consistently sitting up independently of any support! This is exciting for us, of course, because it's a developmental milestone, but he doesn't care about that. For him, it's a whole new perspective. He is now the master of his domain! Well, the master of the 2 foot radius that surrounds him, at least. He can see what he wants and can reach for it.

I love this stage. Because this means now that he can really interact with toys like he hasn't before. I have gotten out the wooden alphabet and number blocks that Dana used as decoration at the Cincinnati baby shower last year and gave to us as a gift. He loves them! What surprises me is just how much fun I'm having, just sitting on the floor playing with him. I build pyramids (both 2d and 3d) with these blocks. He's not really into building or stacking yet, but he very much enjoys knocking over the "buildings" I make. We (okay, I) invented a game, sort of like an improvised version of Jenga, where I see how many blocks I can stack before he knocks them over. I noticed that if you make a small pyramid at the bottom of a single stack (as in, a row of three blocks topped with two blocks, topped with a stack of single blocks) you can get a lot higher than if you just stacked single blocks from the foundation. I assume there's something about the distribution of balance that explains this, but I never took physics, so don't ask me.

We are also getting to the Grabby Stage, sometimes (but not exclusively) accompanied by the Gnawing and Drooling Stage. Anything in his vicinity is fair game. Objects are admired first on their visual appeal, and then appraised as to their gnawability. The evaluation process is fascinating and amusing to watch, except when it's your hair that's being grabbed, pulled, yanked, and eventually masticated and matted down with drool.

But even then it's pretty fun.

The cats love him, but stay a safe distance away from him even when coming close to investigate this strange creature that was smaller than they were when it came home with us 8 months ago and keeps getting bigger and bigger and louder and wetter. We are just loving every single step of this journey called parenthood; it's just such fun and so fascinating.

Changeling returns to Planet Milwaukee

I got so sucked into - and swept up in - mountain life in Breck this summer that I found it very jarring and strange somehow to come back to Wisconsin.

I don't know what it is. Perhaps the perfectly manicured gardens and hanging baskets I got so used to in that affluent ski resort area made the weeds and overgrown gardens in my own yard seem that much more glaring. Or the two-story condo we had to ourselves, complete with balconies off of every room overlooking spacious mountain views, making our tiny 3 bedroom ranch seem rabbit-holish by comparison.

And then there's the humidity. Which I mind far less than I know some people do. What can I say. It does good things for my hair and skin. But it can, in large quantities, make one feel sticky and nasty. There's nothing worse than bumping into a wall on your way down the hall and sticking to it.

But I think the weirdness really comes from having had such a fantastic, restorative and rejuvenating time, and worrying that all the amazing things I got from the change of perspective are somehow attached to the location and will leave me as soon as I move away from them geographically. Having typed that out, it sounds ridiculous, I know. But truly, there's something so powerful about uprooting yourself from your regular habitat and routines and plunking yourself down in an entirely different location for an extended period of time.

Again, perspective.

As I continue to settle in and realize that of course all of the internal change and growth that I experienced this summer is still with me despite the geography of things, I am relaxing a bit. I am still in possession of this very new, fledgling awareness of how my body reacts to certain foods and how clean and wonderful it can feel when I minimize those foods. I still love my new horn and am amazed at how long it took me to come around to the brass horn side of things. (Of course, it didn't help that the first two brass horns I tried weren't good matches for me, but you know.)

Despite the stress of childcare, I had a fantastic summer. This festival is challenging for me, and it was nice to be stretched, to force myself to grow and expand and open up to possibilities I may not have seen if I had just stayed home.

But that's just me. And perhaps it was just this summer. But I do know that I definitely plan to go back to the mountains next summer.

Mountains. Definitely not molehills.

This summer has flown by faster than a greased pig, so much so that I literally haven't had a nanosecond to write about it in here. So here's the Reader's Digest version of things.

Our basement is stabilized - dry and mold-free, and waiting for us to get home next week to choose new carpeting to be installed. Since we are not putting down padding underneath it, we opted for a high quality, thick, high-texture-resiliency type that was within the budget allotted by our insurance. I picked out several neutral (= cat barf camouflaging) colors that I will choose from. (David wanted none of the decision-making with regard to color, so it's all on me. Which is fine.) So that's good.

This is the last week of BMF here in Breckenridge, CO, where I've spent most of July and all of August so far. I can't tell you how much fun I've had, and man, does it make a difference to be at this altitude (9,600 feet elevation) without being pregnant. I had a monster headache the night we arrived, but I popped an Excedrin (gotta love that stuff!) and poof!! Gone. I had a great practice session that night, too. Because our condo is so much closer to the performing arts center than the one I stayed in last year, I've been loving walking to and from rehearsals with my spiffy new lightweight new Thompson Edition case on my back!

It's been a great season: Beethoven's 8th, Pines of Rome, Bernstein "On The Town" and "Fancy Free", Porgy & Bess, an all John Williams concert...and this week, we're doing Corigliano and John Adams!! Does it get any better than this??!! Oh, and for those of you who've known me as a die-hard 8D fan pretty much my whole life, you'd better sit down before you read this...I brought both the Yamadouble and the 8D out this summer, and realized....are you ready for this?...that I prefer my 667D hands down!! Is that a jaw dropper or what?! Listen, nobody was more surprised at this than I was! Since I had just gotten the Yamaha in late March and am required to play a brass horn at work (the 8D is nickel silver and thus has a very different sound that wouldn't blend well at all with the section), I never had the option of choosing before this summer, and I really sat down and compared the two of them. The Yamadouble is so much better in tune, light years easier to play, and the crystalline response and clarity...I just can't get over how much I adore it. It's about time I found a brass horn I liked this much!

Benjamin is doing fabulously, as usual. He sleeps 12 uninterrupted hours at night and still enjoys mid-morning and afternoon naps. (We enjoy his naps too. :D) He is almost ready to sit up on his own; it's a balance thing for him, since his head is so big and he's so lean and long. His legs continue to be strong and hilariously muscular; you should see his little quads and calves! He's not crawling yet, but man does he ever scoot. He can motor around the room on his back, using the back of his head and his legs in this weird crab-like backwards crawl. It's so entertaining. He is no longer breastfeeding, because he also now has two lower teeth which he thought it was uproariously funny to bite me with. (Me: "OWWWWWW!! No bite!!" Ben: "Heee!!" {big grin}) That was the end of nursing for me. Ah well...I can say I breastfed for 7.5 months, and that's pretty good. He's really much more interested in solid foods anyway. Garden Vegetables are his favorite.

This week David's mom is visiting to help take care of Ben and also to have a little vacation; David himself arrives on Thursday morning - yay! - and we drive back to Wisconsin on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. We'll stop in NE the first night and IA the second. Since we installed a nifty mirror above Ben's car seat, meaning he can see us and communicate with us in transit, he is a champion traveler. It's been a great summer in so many ways, and I'll be very happy to get back to our home, kitties, gardens, and the comfort of everyday Milwaukee life.

Basement flooding

Well, after buying and setting up a dehumidifier (which we needed anyway) and a large metal turbo floor fan that could rival a small monsoon in our basement, it turns out that we had mold already growing in the rec room carpeting. Poor David had even borrowed our neighbor Nancy's ShopVac and had spent long arduous hours sucking up water from the floors, to no avail.

Fortunately, nothing we really cared about was damaged or lost. We lost several cardboard boxes that had been sitting unopened in a pyramid-like mountain in the unfinished area by the laundry machines since we moved back in 2005, so it's probably safe to say we don't really need them anyway. Eventually (soon, so we don't exacerbate the mold problem) we will go through them to see if there's anything worth salvaging.

So because we had mold, all of the carpeting had to be ripped out and disposed of and the floors disinfected. We had to keep the kitties out on the sun porch because we don't have a door leading to the basement stairs. Poor bunnies. They were really traumatized. They were yowling and scratching, and, I think, peeing, which they never do in our house (thank god). It really reeks of cat pee out there now. I'll have to go out there with a spray bottle of bleach.

The restoration guys (David said there were 5 of them that descended on the basement at once; I was playing a matinee concert, so I had a welcome escape from it all) came and ripped everything out, disinfected all of the floors, and brought and left their own dehumidifiers and turbo floor fans. So now we have absolutely no carpeting downstairs, which is weird. The floors underneath what was very nice berber-style wall-to-wall carpeting are cement with dark green paint over it. Not horrible, but definitely not something we can live with if we want to maintain that very large surface area as livable space.

So now we're investigating flooring replacement options that will be much more mold/water resistant than the carpeting was (the padding underneath it was functioning as a mildew hotel, ick) while still looking nice/like a family room atmosphere. Any suggestions?

Oh, and fortunately for us, since we had an additional flood policy added to it (we're less than half a mile from the Milwaukee River), our homeowner's insurance has our wet butts covered. Phew!!! Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there, indeed! :)

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto...

Holy sewage flooding, Batman!

Wisconsin was a hotbed of storms yesterday, with seven counties statewide reporting tornado sightings. Milwaukee county (ours) wasn't one of them, but we got an unprecedented deluge of rain.

In fact, we got so much rain that the municipal sewage system of Milwaukee couldn't keep up with it. We have two sump pumps in our basement but the well was still overflowing. I came home after last night's concert to find poor David running back and forth with a bucket, bailing from the well to the laundry sink. I helped him with a wastebasket for a while but then started running around trying to pick things up off the floor that we wanted to save. Our downstairs office and rec room both had sopping wet carpeting, so we were digging papers out of file drawers and picking up cardboard boxes. At the worst point we had about 4 inches of standing water in the lower parts of the non-carpeted half of our basement where the laundry and storage is. We had lots of storage boxes get wet, but we haven't opened them since we moved here in 2005 so we probably don't really need them anyway.

The front page of today's paper said: "In Milwaukee, two south side buildings collapsed, rescue workers snatched people from cars stalled in streets turned to rivers, while pressure caused by storm waters gushing through city sewers flipped 200-pound manhole covers like pennies. At one point, water poured into the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District's deep tunnel system at a rate equivalent to 10 billion gallons per day..."

I called two different plumbers' emergency numbers, and they both said that there wasn't anything they could do since everyone in the area had this problem, and many had it far worse than we did since we have two sump pumps helping us out. I ran outside to check the downspouts to make sure nothing was backed up and also checked the outflow pipe for the sump pumps and the water coming out of the 3" diameter pipe was moving at a very high rate of both pressure and speed.

It certainly does give one perspective on the horrors that Katrina victims went through. This is peanuts, obviously, to that.

So now I have to go downstairs and do a huge load of sewer-water soaked towels. I think I'll run them through the rinse and spin cycle twice before I even start the wash....eeeeeew....

Is it June already?

I can't believe it. It sure doesn't seem like it.

Well, here in Wisconsin it doesn't, anyway. It's been cold and rainy.

The rain part is fine; I love rain. It's my favorite weather - specifically, big, loud, flashy thunderstorms. We had some of those last night. I nursed Ben during one of them and during his burp break, he saw some lightning as he was standing on the nursing pillow looking out of his bedroom windows, followed by a huge crash of thunder. He was startled and looked at me for a cue as to how to react. So I gave him a huge smile, and he gave me one back.

What a little cutie.

He is growing and changing so fast. I know that sounds trite, and of course it's the way things should be; but it's all so new to us, and we just love it. His vocalizations are becoming more and more elaborate and musical. He has these beautiful, flute-like upper-register babblings, trills, and birdlike gurgles. They are heartwarmingly endearing. (They are also getting louder, but that's okay, too.)

He's teething as well, which means a lot of gnawing. His hands, your hands, burp cloths, blankets, teething rings, rattles, binkies - pretty much anything in his mouth's vicinity qualifies as gnaw fodder. Along with the teething is the grabbing. Mommy's hair is a very popular target. I often have to pry my tresses free of his tight little fists, one cute pudgy finger at a time, saying, "gentle, gentle". Also amusing, with the increased tactile awareness. is his interaction with the cats, since Bianca and Emma love to jump up on the nursing pillow with him. Today he reached out to pet Emma, which freaked her out and sent her flying. David, who is more annoyed by Emma than the other two cats, found this quite entertaining.

Solid foods continue to go over well. We've given him pears and peas recently. The peas are a big hit! I was all ready with the digicam cocked and pointed at his face when I first introduced them, expecting a grimace or "yech" face. But he just gobbled them right up. David chastised me for expecting him not to like the peas, saying we shouldn't influence his food preferences by expecting him to react one way or the other. Perhaps when he's old enough to pick up on that sort of thing.

As of right now, he's not quite 6 months, and I think it's safe to assume that this kind of subtle humor still eludes him.

The other hilarious thing I feel it appropriate to mention is that the two sounds that cause him to open his mouth the widest for the spoon are a descending bomb explosion (high-to-low whistle followed by detonating sound) and a sputtering plane breaking down (think Snoopy and his Red Baron). Those are his favorites.

Notice the pea trajectory on the high chair tray: he had just sneezed with a mouth full of them. :-D

This absolutely enrages me....

Forget that the news idiots mistakenly label her as a member of the orchestra; she was in the orchestra chorus. This is so maddening I am seeing red....

New Information in Orchestra Member's Death
Melanie Stout
Katie DeLong

MILWAUKEE - Shocking new information in the murder of a member of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The new information comes from the restraining order the victim filed against her ex-husband three years ago. He's accused of stabbing Elisabeth Witte to death in a downtown Milwaukee parking garage over the weekend.

Police arrested Witte's ex-husband, Gerhard Witte, for her murder, however, he has not yet been charged.Elisabeth Witte tried to protect herself from her ex-husband. In 2005, she filed a restraining order several months after she filed for divorce. Police reports show Gerhard Witte told officers he: "...considers his wife no more than an intruder who intends to steal his property." He also said, "he will kill his estranged wife and then himself if she does not drop the divorce action, return to live with him and meet various other demands."

The reports also say Ms. Witte was so fearful her ex-husband would kill her that she fled to Germany.

The reports state officers questioned Gerhard Witte and "when asked if he had any firearms, Witte stated he will not use a gun. Witte stated he is a medical doctor and he knows precisely where to cut someone, and gave an example of the abdomen."

Three years later, it happened. Elisabeth Witte was stabbed to death in a parking structure. Police say Gerhard Witte was standing over her body. A knife was nearby.

Tragedy at the MSO

A wonderful, brilliant, talented woman that I knew, who sang with the MSO chorus, was brutally stabbed to death in the parking garage across from the Marcus Center.

I knew her. I loved her.

She was tall, vibrant, extremely friendly and outgoing, and so full of energy. She was the librarian for the MSO chorus. She was so sweet to me; we talked often backstage whenever the chorus was performing with us.

The last time I saw her, I showed her a small album of pictures of Benjamin, and she exclaimed over them. I loved talking to her. She had the most lovely German accent.

Apparently her ex-husband, against whom she had filed a restraining order, had tracked her down and found her in the parking structure. It is being considered an act of domestic violence and not related to downtown area crime per se. He has admitted to the crime.

It's amazing, because I would never have guessed that she had such a past. She seemed so strong. I suppose she had to be to leave an abusive situation (she left him in 2005). She was 65.

This is the first person I know who has been murdered. I am stunned and saddened. I wish I had somehow known to warn her, to look out for her, to protect her.

She had just performed the Bach Mass in B Minor with the MSO. How incredibly heartwrenching that that was her last performance, the last time her voice would ever be heard on this earth.

Oh, DROOL!!

That's supposed to be one of the first signs of teething. We have the motherlode of drool in our house now, and Ben is its fountain. Gnawing and refusal to nurse are other symptoms. We've got that action going on too.

And our previously amazing little sleeper, who was sleeping 12 consecutive hours at night, has now been waking at around midnight, screaming bloody murder. To be fair, last night he was actually really hungry - I think because he hadn't eaten well before bed because of his gummy woes.

So tonight I loaded him up with solid foods, since eating with a spoon doesn't seem to bother him as much as sucking. He's getting really good at it, too (as opposed to his first experiences eating from a spoon, where he looked like a bowl of porridge had exploded all over him). He's an alarmingly wonderful eater. Tonight he mowed through half a container of bananas, half a container of prunes (which, hilariously, he loved), a full tablespoon of single grain oatmeal mixed with breastmilk, and 5 ounces of mixed formula & breastmilk. (We're officially supplementing now.)

And after I cleaned him up, burped and changed him, he wanted to nurse!!

So now begins a new era - teething rings, frozen washcloths, and miscellaneous plastic objects for him to chew on. I assembled his high chair, and he loves it - it's much easier to feed him solids in it than his Bumbo. I'm going shopping tomorrow for some more formula, rice cereal, and baby food. I might try him on some more single veggies - so far he's just had squash, which, like his mother, he's not all that enthused about. ;)

Stop the world, I wanna get off...or do I?

Do you ever have one of those days where you just can't stop? As in, you have the TV news channel ticker at the bottom of your conscious mind that is telling you everything that needs to be done, and everything on the list seems completely urgent and in need of doing RIGHT NOW?

What's so strange is that I actually have the healthy, good-for-me thoughts in my brain: "Today I should do yoga...I should sit on the meditation cushion...today I should just go out, just for the sake of going out of the house, but not to run errands. I'll just go to a coffee shop and read."

I had all of those good intentions yesterday. Really. I had the day off. I had time. I could have relaxed, done some really good healing things for myself. We just got home from a tour this weekend to Wisconsin Rapids and Green Bay. I had earned some R and R.

You wanna know what I did instead?

I went to three - yes, three - different home supply warehouses to price patio tables. (Target had the least expensive, Lowes the best quality...but that's beside the point.) I raided the garden center at one of the aforementioned home supply warehouses and bought tons of annuals, potting soil, and ivy. I stopped by one of my favorite clothing stores and stocked up on high-quality tunic-style t-shirts.

Then I came home, took care of some work-related phone calls and email, went through a whole bunch of paperwork, fed Ben at least 3 times, took the baby monitor outside on the front porch and planted two giant pots of red geraniums with variegated vinca ivy trim in front, two hanging pots of cascading wave white petunias, and a smaller pot of red and gold marigolds. I hooked up a new hose and watered them all and cleaned up. I emptied, reloaded, ran, and re-emptied the dishwasher. I put away the dishrack dishes. I did two loads of laundry. I organized the utility closet. I cooked and ate dinner.

I then proceeded to straighten the entire house, picking everything up off the floor and clearing tables so the cleaning team that comes can actually get to the surfaces they need to clean.

I didn't get into bed until nearly 1am, and it was absolutely not Ben's fault. And ha! Even though I was in bed, I still thought, "oh man, I need to get some reading done for my church study group on Wed. night" and went on to read a chapter to check that too off my Cinderellafied to-do list.

So I want to ask you...do you ever have these binges of productivity when you think perhaps you might want to slow down a bit? I actually don't mind so much, except when the constant tickertape of my brain can't stop for days on end. My house looks great, and so does my front porch...but sheesh. Why is it so hard to slow down and just have a cup of coffee forgodsakes?

Whoa, I have to log off this thing and go to work. I have a concert at 10!

NPR Commentary: Why I love Hillary

I heard this AWESOME editorial on NPR yesterday, and I just had to share it. It completely sums up why I was so excited that Hillary was in the game, and is a very accurate portrayal of the female experience in this country - from my vantage point, anyway. It reminded me of one summer wedding I attended, where someone asked me, "You didn't bring a date?! When are you getting married?" after I'd just gotten home from going on tour to Europe with one of the biggest and best orchestras in the world and had found out I was going to solo with one of the orchestras I was contracted with. But none of that mattered.

So when I heard this commentary on the radio, I was saying "Amen, sistah!" in my kitchen as I prepared dinner. I couldn't have said it better myself!! (I suppose that's why she's the writer and I'm the musician....)

****************

Commentary
Why I Love Hillary
by Susan Cheever
Listen Now [2 min 32 sec] add to playlist

All Things Considered, May 14, 2008 · Why is it that the more Hillary loses, the better I like her? (Yes, I know she won last night but that's already being dismissed.) She's glowing with the inner fire of the warrior in a battle she can't win without a miracle — why do I identify with that so much? Why do I feel after forty years of voting, that at last for once, there is a politician who truly represents me and not just because she wears pansuits?

When I tell a handsome man at a party that I support Hillary, he looks my black pantsuit up and down. "That figures, you're an older woman," he says. I am hurt, but he is right. Woman get their power from their looks and Hillary has worn away her youth in the service of a difficult husband, a smart child and the ideal of service. She was never the pretty, simpering, long-legged blonde we were all supposed to be; she had to find another way to be a woman. Me too.

"I love her because she is a loser, and I'm a loser," I tell my brother.

"But Sue, you are a big success," he says.

Hillary's a success too, but she's a worker, and women don't get respect for being hard workers, they get respect for having good legs. She's a woman dedicated to social justice, but women don't get respect for their dedication — they get it for their baking skills. She's a woman with staying power. But women don't get respect for their staying power, they get respect for their sexual power.

My generation of women were told that our biggest job was to marry the right guy — and the sooner the better. When I went for career counseling my last year of college, the dean gave me her condolences.

"All our best girls are engaged," she said. Oh yes, it sounds outrageously antique, but is it? I never talk for long about my 26-year-old daughter, a lawyer and an activist at Harvard, without someone asking: "And is she seeing someone?"

Women like me usually run for president of the PTA or president of some nice arts organization. We don't usually get to run for president of the United States. At last here's a woman who wants to play with the big boys, and she's qualified, and she's giving them a run for her money. And I love her for that.

Susan Cheever is a writer who lives in New York City.

Nursing cover retailers are WACK!!

So there are these really great inventions called nursing covers. They're basically a swatch of good-quality fabric that ties around your neck so you can feel more comfortable adjusting yourself in public while nursing. I personally wanted one because the logistics of getting comfortably set up to nurse Ben while trying to remain modest were, to say the least, challenging.

There are some things I just don't get, though.

One of the companies that makes these things is - are you ready for this? - actually called Hooter Hiders. I'm not making this s#!t up. Go to their site if you don't believe me. I think there's another one called "Milky Juggs".

???!!! Umm, helloooo? You're not marketing these things to beer-drinking straight men in bars, people. These are women, mothers, with taste, with bodies they actively use and have used for nurturing and creating life. How do you stay in business?!!

Not only are some of the names problematic, but they erroneously market "hip, chic" styles. Most of the fabrics look like color and pattern arguments: paisleys and plaid painfully combined, reds and pinks in serious conflict with eachother, polka dots in ridiculous 70's colors. Maybe I'm boring, but can we just have a navy blue one? Maybe a nice black with stripes? Why does it have to look like a bagpiper had a fight with a drag queen near a sewing machine?

When I decided I wanted one, since Ben is getting bigger and thus easier to hold to nurse without a nursing pillow, I refused to buy the Hooter Hider - or the "Milky Juggs" one, either, thank you very much - for obvious reasons.

So I ordered a nice one from this site.

The thing is, when I got it in the mail, there was a Bible verse sticker on the back. I thought it was odd, and said, "what the hell?" and dismissed it. But then I opened up the cellophane (which I have to admit was beautifully and neatly folded, with a bow around it) and one of those Jesus pamphlets fell out. It was cleverly folded in with the fabric, concealed in the cellophane package.

All religious ideologies aside, I thought this was inappropriate and unprofessional. I mean, is a personal business really the platform for evangelism? I don't go inserting Buddhist and Unitarian paraphernalia into my resumes or CD's, but then those religions are non-proselytizing.

But I digress.

So I was ready to send it back to them, or at the very least send their pamphlet back with a nice note saying, "I'm sorry, this got into my package by mistake...." ....but....

It's a really, really nice nursing cover - 300 thread count, excellently sewn and constructed. It came quickly and correctly addressed, and I love it. As taken aback as I was by the religious in-your-faceness, I checked the "about" section of their website, and they're very upfront about their convictions. I had to give them that. I had missed it when I had initially placed the order, but at least they weren't trying to be sneaky about it. They're at least honest.

For some reason, this made all the difference for me, that it wasn't an ambush - just an expression of their well-meaning beliefs. I thought about the motives of the women who sent it - they're Southern Baptists - and knew in my heart that they didn't mean any harm. I don't share their ideology, but that's certainly not something to get one's panties in a wad about. And they donate 20% of their profits to humanitarian relief efforts, which is really nice.

And now I have a really, really nice nursing cover, made of nice fabric that, while it might not be my first fashion choice, at least does not make the statement "I am blind, and therefore cannot assume responsibility for this atrocious pattern" or "Help! I've fallen into a 70's color scheme and I can't get up!"

Heretically speaking, I have to say I got a tremendous kick out of the Jesus pamphlet. It was a "Love Letter from God", which was a whole bunch of Bible verses strung together in what could not have been larger than 4 point font. To my delight, it included hysterical phrases like "He's the Father you've always wanted!" and was signed, "Your Dad, the Almighty". I don't know why, but that made me chortle.

Oh, this is rich!! I found an online version!! I love the sparkly things in the background near Jesus's face. Classic!!

Yes, I know straight where I'm going - I've already put in my reservation for a luxury handbasket. And that's okay. I'm more aligned with Ghandi and Buddha anyway, and according to the rules, they'll be there waiting for me. :)

Reading my way out of a diaper bag

All those naysayers who said my life as I knew it would end when I had a child can go kiss a moose. I still make time for the things I want to do, but I've actually become more efficient because I have less time to waste. This is good for me, since most of the things I used to waste time doing weren't really all that interesting or good for me anyway.

The writer's strike helped me phase out my "active TV watching" - that is, the shows I'd make time to watch or tape when they were new, as opposed to just flipping through channels. And two of the three shows I was actively watching were phased out anyway (the Bionic Woman and Crossing Jordan). When the few shows I was still remotely involved in finally started back up with their new material, I just wasn't interested anymore. Reading is so much better for my mind, and much less annoying - I am not nearly as tolerant of ads as I once was, especially now that I'm reading more and am accustomed to uninterrupted entertainment and mental engagement. True, there's always the mute button, but then I'm bored and looking for something to do.

Yet another reason I'm not actively seeking out and watching the shows I had been into - CSI, Law & Order, Women's Murder Club? I just can't do the violence and death and suffering implicit in them anymore. It sounds corny, and this is not in any way intended as a judgment against anyone who loves crime drama (I still like reading it, which is somehow different), but now that I'm a mother - now that I've created, nurtured, and borne another human life, with my own body - I just can't deal with death in the same way I used to. I really think that there's something animal that gets triggered in us as a species that's built in to ensure survival, because I can tell you it was immediate and instant once I held Ben for the first time. Now, my empathy for the mothers in the shows is raging out of control, as are the maternal instincts that want to protect every single child on earth from suffering and harm. Stuff from those shows gets into my head, and I start thinking, "Oh my god...what if that happens to Ben? I have to go check on him right now..." and then the insanity begins. I won't do that to myself anymore. It's just too disturbing at this point.

I suppose I could find a new genre of TV watching - say, comedy, or sitcoms. But I am so sick of the same crappy formula. Man is an idiot. Man is also fat pig, and is slob. Man somehow is married to gorgeous, thin, tolerant, supermodel wife. Man, amazingly (given that he is fat, messy, and stupid) takes supermodel wife - who also functions as his full time maid, chef, and clothing consultant - completely for granted. Man treats wife like cave man and is about as communicative. Wife is frustrated with man.

And these situations are portrayed as funny?! ARRRRGH!! I find them trite, unevolved, and, truth be told, quite depressing. If anyone has any suggestions as to good comedy that isn't completely lost in the 50's with regard to gender roles, I'd welcome them. I'm not going all anti-TV prudish; David and I still love watching The Simpsons and Seinfeld together, but that's about it. And at least when I watch things with him, I have someone to talk to or snuggle during the ads. :)

And so, I turn with renewed appreciation to my fiction and non-fiction bibliofriends. I finished Dean Koontz's The Husband, which was a riveting thriller with whiplash-inducing plot twists that were absolutely spinetingling. My brother turned me on to Koontz, who I am delighted to report is a phenomenal writer. Not only does he spin a mean tale, but his imagery and word painting are just so real you feel like you're there. I love a writer who can suck you right into the book like that.

I then picked up Zadie Smith's On Beauty. My friend Jen had turned me on to Zadie a while ago with her debut novel White Teeth, which was very good, but I think On Beauty was even better. Both novels delved deeply and intricately into culture/nationality/race/class clashes, but perhaps because Beauty was set in America and the characters were more believable and sympathetic, I enjoyed it on a deeper level than Teeth.

Recently I have begun Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. While I don't necessarily identify with the author's beliefs or practices, so far I am finding it an enlightening and entertaining glimpse into someone else's spiritual and personal growth journey. Gilbert is hilarious, heartbreaking, insighful, and sometimes annoying (her comedy seems forced and a bit over the top sometimes). But I am having fun reading it so far.

For the Buddhist study and meditation group at my church, we are reading Traleg Kyabgon's The Essence of Buddhism. This is a very good book, but it sometimes keeps the kid gloves on when dealing with difficult issues. I was so annoyed when I read the chapter on karma and rebirth, both of which are probably the top two stickiest subjects Buddhists have to reconcile in their faith. After much turgid definition and explanation, at the very end of the chapter tat addresses both concepts, Kyabgon writes: "...even if rebirth does not exist, we have not lost anything by believing in it, because leading a moral life makes us into better human beings, endowing this life with meaning and significance." I laughed out loud; so what was the whole point of that chapter, then?

Paul Norton of the Milwaukee Mindfulness Center gave a fabulous seminar on Buddhism and meditation at my church at the beginning of April. It was just fantastic. He explained both subjects easily in less than 2 minutes. On karma, he explained that if you do good things and live well, good things will definitely happen but they will be internal, not external. He also said that the literal definition of reincarnation (as in a soul is plucked from one body and then reinserted into another body) is implausible, but rebirth on a figurative level - that we are reborn in every moment, with every breath - is indeed very real. I found his explanations infinitely more helpful than the book. :)

For the Sacred Poetry class, also given at my church, we're reading a lot of Rumi, a Sufi poet who has written some absolutely beautiful (and difficult) poems. We're also reading Mary Oliver's Thirst, which has some of the most deeply poignant and exquisite poems I have ever read. They are so musical in their construction; each one is like a song.

So what are YOU reading these days? You can post a comment anonymously, you know, without having to create a Blogger account...

What a difference (WARNING: horn nerd post)

Hey there. I'm having a ball practicing these days, for many reasons; but the biggest and best is that I have a new horn!

A bit of history: I had bought a Yamaha triple horn in 2004 to blend better with the MSO section (the first brass double horn I'd bought, a Conn 11DRS, was too dark for the section and didn't blend well).

To understand what a triple horn is, you need to know what a descant horn is. A descant horn has much shorter tubing so it's easier to get high notes. A triple horn is basically a regular (double) horn with a descant horn built in; it has three layers of tubing rather than just two, hence the name. The extra third layer of tubing is very small (like a descant's), making it easier to play in the extreme high range with ease and grace. Typically, triple horns are mainly used by high horn players (those in Principal and 3rd horn positions).

To make a long story short, over these past several years of playing the triple - as amazing as it is for some things - I came to realize that I just wasn't comfortable on it for most of what I have to do at work. Don't get me wrong; it's a great horn, and I'll keep it for pieces that require more gossamer flexibility and agility, but for my position as 3rd horn (which requires more brute strength and high range endurance than grace and delicacy), I just don't need it. In fact, the triple was leading me down the scary road to lip fatigue and damage; it was so resistant, the air would back up and cause impact stress to my lip - which was especially painful when I needed to play loudly. That combined with how hard it is for me to get a really big sound on it would, in the long run, be a recipe for disaster and would endanger my playing longevity.

I have to pause for a second here and say that there are more adventurous horn players out there who are enthusiastic about trying new equipment (horns, mouthpieces, mutes, lead pipes, etc.) and who probably would have figured this out sooner. We in the brass world affectionately call them Equipment Nerds. They are your best friends when you're looking for something new, as they enjoy doing the research and probably know what you need. Alas, I am not an Equipment Nerd, and unfortunately lean toward the opposite extreme; I tend to stick to the same horn and mouthpiece for pretty much everything.

So how did I find this new magical horn? I had a student come in with a brand new Yamaha 667D. It's just Yamaha's professional brass double horn - simple, but extremely well made, affordable (since it's from the factory rather than built by hand), beautifully consistent in pitch, and not in the least resistant. Best of all, it has the wonderfully brilliant, bright, and more translucent sound that the MSO horn section is famous for. Anyway, this student wanted me to try out the horn to make sure it was a good one, to give her my blessing as to whether she should buy it or not.

Wow. I almost went through the roof. I told her that if she didn't want to buy it, that I did. (After that endorsement, she bought it. :D)

It's the same old story: you don't realize how you're suffering until you aren't anymore. I hadn't realized how confined I had felt by the resistance and notchiness of the triple until I started singing, really and truly singing, through this more open horn which could take everything I had to give it. I was so ecstatic I called the regional Yamaha dealer and had him order two for me to try so I could buy the "pick of the litter". I bought one at the end of March, and had Wes Hatch put his lead pipe on it for pitch and air flow. Many horn players like to strip the lacquer (protective metal coating) from factory made horns, and I have done it to other horns I've had, but I decided for acoustic reasons to leave it on this particular one. This will also preserve the shininess.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much less stressful work has been since I got this horn (and again, I didn't even really realize it had gotten that way until I made the switch). I have literally had so much fun every time I've performed on it. My endurance has shot through the roof again now that my face isn't pummeled by the air backlash of the resistant triple, and my accuracy has improved immensely since the notes on this horn have larger "shelves" to place them in rather than the smaller notches of the notes on the triple. What a difference!

And on a purely cosmetic note, this horn is absolutely stunningly gorgeous. This isn't really essential but is a nice extra. ;)

Thank you, Hillary....

....you are officially making it easier for me to envision voting for Barack in November, as I suspsect will be the case, when you say crap like this unabashedly to the press:

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said April 22 in an interview with ABC. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Girl, what were you thinking?! Is this really a democrat talking?!

Election apathy

Well, after being initially all fired up about Hillary and put off by Obama, I am now pretty much disgusted with both of them. This primary delegate crap has gone on too long, and while I'm still halfheartedly rooting for Hillary to win the candidacy, I pretty much don't care at this point. The fact that this has been drawn out so long does not serve the party well in the least, and as evidenced by the tight race for the ticket, there are going to be a slew of pissed off Democrats who wanted someone else no matter who wins.

Unless there's a combined ticket with both of their names on it. I don't really see either of them as second fiddle to the other, though many feel Hillary should concede to Obama. Of gender and race, I think unfortunately sexism is the weightier variable in this contest, though being white I certainly am no expert on such commentary.

It's just a big mess. I am preparing myself to be disappointed that Barack will probably win the ticket and I will have to somehow stomach voting for a candidate that I am not enthusiastic about. After Hillary's "enemy fire" video stunt recently, though, it won't be as hard as I initially feared it would be. {sigh}

Mmmm....rice cereal....

At Benny's 4 month appointment two weeks ago, the doctor told us we could start him on rice cereal.

I was ecstatic.

Not that I don't love breastfeeding, because I do. Especially now that he's bigger - 14 pounds - I've discovered the joy of lying down on the bed and just relaxing, reading as he nurses. (I didn't feel comfortable doing that when he was much smaller, and I never sleep now when he does it.)

Speaking of his size, I'm still working on my defensive mama bear reaction whenever someone comments "Oh, he's so small! So tiny! What is he, just a few months? FOUR months? Wow!" and then proceeds to bloviate about how their child approached the size of a small farm animal at 4 months, was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound at 6 months, and as a toddler is preparing to enter the Olympics next year as a gymnast.

It's annoying.

But like I said, I'm working on it. {**breathes in, breathes out....**}

So back to the cereal. I bought cute little Gerber rubber-headed spoons and small little plastic bowls, and Gerber's DHA enriched rice cereal. We also bought a Bumbo, which is a brilliant invention that helps infants not quite yet able to sit up on their own to do so while also strengthening their muscles to prepare to do it on their own. It's sort of like training wheels for sitting. We also got the tray that attaches to the Bumbo. So it's like a mini high chair. He loves it.

Mind you, while infants are born knowing instinctually how to suck, they do not know how to eat from a spoon. They have to learn. This is a messy process.

Very messy.

Especially since Ben likes to smile constantly, especially when I'm right there in front of him. Which means that instead of chewing or swallowing the stuff, he often just sits there and grins at me as it runs down his face in a puddle of drooly gruel. We saturated enough paper towels the first few times to kill several trees. I'd say that 80% of it ended up on his face.

Now we have about a 50% ingestion rate. I can see him chewing, and I can also see the looks on his face as it registers that he's actually tasting it. He doesn't seem all that thrilled about it. My mom told me that it goes down better if it's warm, so I make sure to nuke it for 10 seconds or so and that does help it go down better. She also taught me the very effective trick of washing it down with a bottle between spoonfuls. This works wonders for getting him to swallow his "gruel", as David likes to call it because a character in Austen's Emma is very fond of gruel. (For those of you just tuning in, David is a bit of an Austen groupie and belongs to several online and real-life communities of Janeites.)

The beauty of this is that I can still breastfeed him, and I plan to for at least the next several months if not for his first year. But I can start to do it less often now. I am no longer his sole source of nourishment, and this is a huge relief. To say nothing of the physical discomfort, which subsided after the first agonizing few months but never really went away entirely, I will be immensely glad to not feel quite as much like a dairy farm.

Benny's first road trip to Ohio!

Last week we left on Wednesday to go to Wooster, Ohio, a small town about an hour and a half southwest of Cleveland, where David's parents live. We had a fabulous time. Mimi (my mother in law) threw an open house style party the next day. Several of our NE Ohio friends and family came to visit, including David's close friends Joan and Marie (former co-worker and college buddy, respectively), my dear friends Karin and Tamara, and a whole slew of Woosterites that hadn't yet met Ben. Jim and Betty Blue drove down from their retirement community in Avon, Ohio. Jim is the brother of Bob Blue, one of my Grandpa Phil and Grandma Ginny's best friends, and Jim and Betty attend the same Unitarian Church in Rocky River that I went to while I was still freelancing in Cleveland years ago, and we've kept in touch. Small, small world! They had a lovely time holding Benjamin and it was such a treat to see them. Ben also got to spend some more quality time with his cousin Sara, who is exactly 4 months older than he is to the day, and had the treat of meeting his third cousin Hayley (daughter of David's 2nd cousin, Jenn Schlumbohm) at the open house.


From there we left for Columbus, Ohio, where we stayed with my brother Phil and his wife Julie. They have an 8 month old, Elise Madeline Hamlin, whom we had never met, and they hadn't yet met Ben. It was such a fun time! I took some pretty hysterical video of Elise's reaction to seeing Ben for the first time, and I'll try to upload that soon.

The last leg of our trip was Cincinnati, where my parents and sister's family live within a few blocks of eachother. We had a ball! My dad let me play two movements from the first cello suite that I had been working on, which was fun, and our niece Jenna had a lot of fun with her new little cousin. I got to see Kim and her new little one Julia, who's 6 weeks younger than Benny, and you should have seen him babble at her! Also got to see my parents' friend Jane, who is one of Benny's many honorary aunties. It was a lot of fun.

What a bountiful and loving extended family our little guy has already! Lots more to write - I'm majorly blogstipated, since I haven't written in ages - but it'll have to come in shorter spurts since I don't have long blocks of time to write anymore!

Rites of Spring

Well, it's official - spring is finally here!

At least for a few days, anyway, here in good ol' Wisconsin.

This past week was a doozie for me. I finished organizing, data-entering and spreadsheeting all of our tax information to get to our accountant by Tuesday. UGH. Then I went back to work officially full time after being on maternity leave, and it was a 9 service week. (A service, in orchestra parlance, is any unit of 2.5 hours, such as a rehearsal or performance; a normal week is 8 services. For those of you who are doing the math and thinking, "that's nothing!": factor in at least 10 hours of practicing and score/recording studying, as well as the physical and mental exertion of high mastery performance, and it's a long week.)

And the repertoire last week was awesome. We did Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the Pastoral - think shepherds in their fields, bunnies hopping, birdies tweeting. It's a total Disney movie. Oh wait! It was! In the original Fantasia, it was the one in the meadows where the goats (I think?) were hopping around? And then we did Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", which was awesome. And it was also in Fantasia, I believe! Wasn't it used for the dinosaur bit? Anyway, it was amazing. The Rite of Spring is probably my favorite piece of all time. It is so intense, difficult, and pulsing with energy and rhythm. I adored listening to Ted Soluri play the opening bassoon solos - they sounded so effortless and sweet. All three concerts were well attended, and we got standing ovations after every performance.

It was an appropriately timed concert, with its spring theme. We've had two consecutive sunny days in the 60's now, here in the upper midwest, and after the abominable winter we've had, they seem even more precious! We have three crocuses in bloom in our front flower bed, and shoots of tulips and daffodils are poking their way through the thawing soil. I went to a Buddhist meditation seminar at my church yesterday so couldn't get out for much of it, but today David and I took a walk with Benny in his stroller. It was so nice. I have the windows open here at the house and the cats are excitedly sitting on the sills, sniffing the air enthusiastically.

Black Liberation Theology

I remember back when I was freelancing in NE Ohio, playing Principal Horn with the Akron Symphony. We did this annual outreach benefit concert that was an outrageous success every year. It was called "Gospel Meets Symphony." I remember being completely blown away by the incredible power of the energy onstage.

I was raised Methodist in a wonderful church in Cincinnati. It was a great church to grow up in, and I'll always be thankful for my roots there. As I've grown spiritually through the years, I've delved into many versions of Christianity: UCC, Presbyterian, non-denominational fundamentalist (yes, it's true!) and Pentecostal, in reverse order. After much angst-filled soul searching, I happily came home to the Unitarians - a place that embraces and freely welcomes anything and everything.

Okay, so, back to the Gospel concert. I remember being there on that stage, feeling the pulse and vibrancy of the 300+ voice gospel choir, witnessing the unfettered joy of its members as they cried out and sang with spinetingling resonance. The choir's irrepressable joy, the gorgeously rich jazz chords from the Steinway grand, the unmistakeable texture added by the Hammond organ, the rhythmic explosion of the drum set (played by a ridiculously hot brother who I had a mini-crush on), and the synergy of the whole 85 piece orchestra - what a synthesis of talent. It was overwhelmingly powerful.

I remember being so blown away by this particular version of Christianity, very unlike many of the others I had experienced. The emotions weren't based on fear (believe or you'll go to hell), guilt (you're a sinner, so you'd better be grateful for Jesus's ransom), superiority (God only accepts Christians into heaven, so obviously it's the best religion), or intolerance (of homosexuality, feminism, interracism, sexuality in general, etc.).

The focus was very simple, and very different. The message was about healing, of defying convention and expressing your joy and energy and letting it all out unselfconsciously. About finding strength in the midst of oppression. Of sadness, of trials and tribulations, of immense suffering, slavery and bondage. These are issues which much of the black community knows all too intimately. When you consider that it's been less than 60 years since the shameful Jim Crow laws were in effect - that there are still human beings walking this earth who remember legalized segregation - it makes logical sense that this group would still be feeling the impact of such treatment. I cringe whenever I hear my white peers say things like, "why should they get special treatment?" How about retributive treatment? Affirmative action can't logically be "special" or seen as an "advantage over" another race unless everyone has, at the very least, adequate resources, educative opportunities, well-funded schools, low-crime living environments, and role models to burgeon aspirations for better lives. How can you achieve it if you can't even envision it?

I remember feeling so incredibly lucky to be on that stage, with all of these new people, experiencing all of these new (to me) feelings and approaches to religion. I learned by listening to this great story on Terry Gross's Fresh Air (NPR) that such a Christianity that focuses on empowerment, reversing oppression, and finding strength in the midst of intense difficulty is called Black Liberation Theology.

Now that is a cause I can get behind.

Judging others as bad, going to hell, or otherwise religiously/politically inferior does not ultimately uplift the spirit or do much good for anyone. Much of what is in the Bible doesn't really do it for me either most of the time. But focusing on Jesus's radical message, his persistence in saying it even when the majority didn't want to hear it, his persecution and suffering at the hands of those who didn't want the oppressed to be empowered, and how his message of acceptance, love, and compassion transcends even his brutal murder...that makes sense to me. That is relevant.

While I would never try to claim kinship with the experiences of African Americans (I acknowledge that I grew up with white privilege), I find the concepts of healing suffering, overcoming adversity, social justice, compassion and acceptance, and equality to be incredibly relevant and compelling. If I had to pick a church that had a specifically Christian focus, one that celebrates Black Liberation Theology might be it.

But as it stands, I'm perfectly at home with the Unitarians! ;)